Cousins

We live only 2 hours away from Caleb's sister and her husband who have 2 children around Reed's age, so he gets to see them often. He especially loves Carrick who is only a few months older. Reed says that Carrick is "the best friend of Reed." He says everything that way. For example, I'm the "mommy of Reed." That gives me some interesting things to think about concerning grammar and linguistics, and how in America, we all think that our Subject+Verb+Object sentence structure is just the way it should be, but that's not even how we necessarily learn to construct language in the beginning.


But I digress.

So anyway, Reed gets to see his cousins all of the time, and this is great, because he will likely be an only child, and I want him to know how to share and have all of those great qualities that come with having siblings. This is not to say that "only" children don't turn out great, because I have some wonderful friends who are only children, but I don't want him to grow up feeling lonely or as though he's missed something.

I was lucky to have a great older brother who let me bully him into playing with me, but I rarely saw my own cousins. We lived in Idaho, and my cousins lived in Texas and Arizona. Every summer, for a while during my youth, my cousins from Arizona would come to visit, and I just remember those times as being crazy fun--even though now, as an adult, I can imagine that having 6 kids and 4 adults was pretty stressful for my parents considering that we lived in a 3 bedroom ranch house. But for me, those are some of my favorite memories, and I'm glad that I can provide similar memories for Reed.

Here Reed is with Carrick. See how his face just glows.

In this picture, Carrick, Reed, and Alivia were playing under our dining room table (which is unusually high). Reed was yelling at his train set "Go Thomas, Go Thomas, Go," and everytime that Thomas would go over the bridge, they would all cheer. Even little Livie cheered, although it was obvious that she was just cheering for cheerings sake.

And here is Reed bonding with his other friends: George the Monkey (as he says it) and Pig.

Kids are really fun. I highly recommend them.